Yesterday was the 6th Friday of the 100 days of gaming, and with it, the 6th Backlog episode of the stream. Now for those who are new, to show some variety of the kinds of games ExtraLife 2017 could show the world, have decided every friday to take a break from the games I am trying to finish and try out something new on a system I have hooked up, but really isn’t getting any love right now. This time, the selection was to come from the downloaded content I have hanging around on the WiiU, and the dice decided to go classic, as the game of choice was the SNES release which many fans of the franchise would go to war to label one of the best games of all time: Final Fantasy III (or as we’ve come to understand it to really be, Final Fantasy VI).

Now, my own history with this franchise could best be described as spotty. Back as a little kid when the NES was he current console, I tried and enjoyed renting the Dragon Warrior titles and casually messing with the original Final Fantasy, but my tastes lead me to try a much more hard core RPG on the system, which would be the RPG I played with for years: Wizardry. It wouldn’t be till years later that I would try to get back to the original title, and I would abandon the franchise promptly when I lost my almost finished saved game to a faulty battery in the cart.

My next time playing a console RPG would actually be on the Sega Smash Pack for the PC when I discovered Phantasy Star 2, which I fell in love with and after devouring 2-4, I found myself opening up more to console-RPGs again, but Final Fantasy would yet disappoint me again, as I played 7 after it was downloadable on PSN via the PSP… and for the record my theory that something was off in emulation used to play turned out to be correct for all the weird behavior glitches I saw while playing. That was a game that really needed to be played on original hardware, no matter how official the download was.

But I saw the promise in the game, so when I saw this much loved classic on the virtual console, I picked it up… where it sat for years until last night.

So what did I think? Well, it’s Final Fantasy. The combat behavior in this game is exactly what you would expect. You and your opponents take up the upper portion of the screen with a display to let you select what you want to do and your party’s stats at the bottom. The only really special thing here is the time bar, which tells you how long you have to wait for each character to choose what they will do, during which the battle will continue above. How much it continues depends on you, as you will have the option of making the game wait to issue any further commands while you are in a menu, or be real-time.

As of for the story (which admittedly is usually a major driving force of an RPG title) it started with a bang. Right off the bat, you play as a team working for the Empire to recover an Esper, only for it to kill everyone but a girl who can use magic (no one knows how… the ability is supposed to no longer exist) and is wearing a brainwash device to keep completely in control. Instead it reacts to her and she passes out only to wake up later with the device removed and to be the immediate center of the plot, which seems incredibly eager to throw as many characters as it can at you before the real plot can begin. I will admit, I am intrigued at this, and will be interested in playing more later when I know I will be spending some quality time with this title.

But aside form that, we also have an update on Metroid 2: Return of Samus. Starting this week, I began playing the original Gameboy title while at the gym, and I gotta admit, I may have misjudged the game when I first tried. Back then, I only had a cart I couldn’t play (European release) and a ROM on my PC I could play with an old POS Gravis Gamepad Pro. Seriously, that rocker-switch was god-awful and I think it may have ruined the game, as finicky actions like how to use the spider ball I am now doing with ease! At this time, I have collected bombs, high jump boots, the varia suit, and said spider ball as well as many missile tanks and two energy tanks. I have also now killed my first too gamma metroids. This has also brought about the next earthquake, but I’m not ready to leave the area I’m in… I get the feeling there is a lot to collect still, and I want to try to get that first. This game will continue Tuesday with updates in the activity section since I’m playing at the gym at work.